Some Basic Film Theory

One of the greatest pieces of advice I have ever heard is from Robert Rodriguez. He said you should learn to trust your instincts. When you imagine a film in your head and you see the shots, you may not be able to write a thesis to back up why you have gone with, say a POV, rather than a tracking mid shot from behind the actor. Hopefully you would have watched enough good movies to have filmmaking running through your blood. If this is the case, trust those instincts. Even if it means you'll make mistakes, it can only better you and your inate ability to get the right shot. That said, here ar a few basic things that you can pickup in any text on filmmaking:

• Low shots shooting up at a character give that character a sense of being important and powerful.
• Higher shots, shooting down onto an actor give that character a sense of being unimportant and weak.
• If you shoot from a 90 degree angle dead onto a character's face (i.e. facing the side of the actor) the audience will not make much of an emotional connection with them. It will feel sterile and cold.
• Bringing the camera around now, the more you move towards shooting the actor's face on, the more of an emotional connection the audience will make.
• Likewise the closer the camera/audience is to a character, the greater the connection.
• Scenes where emotions rise through a scene often work best starting out further away and cutting up until close ups and even extreme close ups. You can also handle the emotional charge on one character by slowly moving the camera towards them.
• POV shots help put the audience into a character and the strongest ways of creating audience-character connections
• Use a wide establishing shot at the beginning of each scene, so the audience has an idea of the spatial relationships between the actors and their envirnment. The only time you do not do this is when you want to portray to the audience that the characters themselves do not know where they are (e.g. beginning of 28 days later).
• Shots from directly behind a character are another way of doing this, but allow the audience to see more.
• Remember, films have rhythm. Imagine a frenzied dog attack scene, or a fight scene. The editing in these films will be incredibly fast paced. Now think of a scene where two people are sitting in a restaurant, getting to know each other. The cuts will tend to match the conversation. If the script dictates that an argument should occur, the speed of the editing will increase also.
• Remember the importance of good sound and how it can add so much to a scene. Check out the hammer drop at the end of my short film Origins to see an example.
• If you intend to cut directly from a wide to a medium, or a medium to a CU, etc, without cutting away, a good trick is to shoot them all from slightly different angles. This will help you hide any action continuity discrepancies.
• Familiarise yourself with the "Line of action." This is an imaginary line that can be seen as a 'stage' in theatre. When you go to watch a play, think how the audience is positioned. It is always to one side of the actors. This means that if actor A stands on the left hand side of the stage, and actor B stands on the right hand side of the stage, actor A will always be looking to his right, and actor B will always be looking to his left. If this were a film, this would be valid, as any cuts to either actor would always result in them looking at each other. If you cut to actor A, jumped the line of action, then cut to actor B from the other side of the stage, you would see actor A looking right, then actor B looking right. This is an extreme example, but you would surprised how many directors have jumped the line by accident - and it causes a jolt to a lot of viewers. A more subtle example is one of my first short films - Opportunity Knocks. In this film Actor A and Actor B are talking in a hallway. Actor A and Actor B both look to their left. This is because the camera jumped the line of action. A lot of people didn't notice it, but then this is as about as subtle as breaking the rule gets. Always imagine your shots as being taken from the audience area at a play, and that will help you to avoid breaking this rule. The one exception to the rule is car scenes, as audiences have become used to the way they work (background moving to the right in one shot, and moving to the left in the next as camera jumps from one actor to another)